Friday, February 22, 2013

It's hard to talk about things in the moment. Especially when they're cripplingly big. I need to get better at it - be able to say out loud - help - I'm suffocating - right now! Help - the feelings are so intense I can't even speak! Help! I'm a tiny man in a box! Ah Rob Brydon. I wonder if he hits those sort of lows, he doesn't really seem to be the type. I definitely reckon Steven Coogan is. I can imagine Steven sinking into weeks of depression without speaking, looking at himself in the mirror, pulling sad clown faces. I wonder who I'd prefer to be - Rob or Steven? The insecure superstar or the steadier, healthierone. Less flashingly brilliant, but solid, great. I'm just thinking of The Trip here, they might have just been characters. I think in that (masterpiece) I would still choose to be Steven. It's a bit fucked up, because Steven is clearly way more miserable than Rob. Rob is flawed and searching too, but he is way more even and grounded. Life doesn't seem so complex to him. And he has a wife and baby. Steven is lost and frustrated. And spectacular. I feel so sorry for him that he can't enjoy his successes and his stature. He feels old. But he's so very real. I am definitely more him, minus the success and stature. And even though it drives me nuts I suppose I'd have to say I would always choose the roller coaster over the merry-go-round.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

I have been thinking lately of all the things that annoy the crap of out me in Paris, like how at the supermarché they don't bloody put your stuff in bags. I mean, the bags are right there, it takes no more effort for the lady to put them there instead of there. Mais no, they have to stick them there, so you have to fumble around and find hands to shove all the stuff in on top of each other badly into the bags while you also rummage around for your card, etcetera, people huffing and puffing behind you because you're an organisational idiot. I wanted to say the r word there but i thought i shouldn't, though isn't the i word offensive too? Anyway, that is one thing about Paris that annoys me that i've been stewing over for far too long - oh - and also they won't even take the stuff out of the basket if you plonk that on the travelator thing prior to the bonjour - if you get one - often you don't. They say 'Take the things out and put them on the travelator thing.' Why the fuck is that? What difference does it make if you're taking the stuff of the travelator or out of the basket? Fuuuuck!So I've been a bit preoccupied with annoyances such as this but then I just heard a walking brass band pass through the neighbourhood, rich, joyful, serene. It floated through the window of the office when I'm sitting right now. And I thought man I fucking love this fucking city.

Monday, February 18, 2013

For the last week I've lived the largest glitch in the matrix I've lived thus far. Do you get that? It happens to me lot - it usually lasts a day. Everyone looks familiar. But this one kept going. It started a week ago on the metro - across from me sat an Indian man - familiar. In the doorway was an elderly gent - familiar. But I didn't know them. When I looked closer at the elderly gent he looked even more familiar and he looked back at me as though I was familiar too. Or maybe he just thought it was strange that I kept looking at him. I figured out eventually that he looked like the French version of an Australian guy off an ad. The Indian man could have actually been the guy from the épicerie on the rue Cail. Or maybe I'd just passed him once on the street. But I knew him. But I didn't know him. And so began an entire week of constant double-taking. Everyone familiar, and yet knowing nobody. No real chance in the 10th arrondissement of Paris to bump into an old chum from primary school. And yet there they are - so many people I know but can't name, and some I can - the Russian version of my 6th grade maths teacher in top-to-toe fur, my first best friend grown up and turned fat, French Gotye serving beers at the bar, French Larry David at the next table, that Amanda chick from all those Australian comedy galas in drag on a poster, the female French Gilbert Blythe in the park with her kid; French everyones everywhere, some nameable, most not, all unreachable in some weird way. A familiar place full of familiar people, that are not familiar enough to be familiar. Like a dream.And then, suddenly it's gone, dropped, and everyone's unfamiliar again.Does that happen to you? I swear, it's happening to me more and more and I wonder if one day I'll just live it permanently. I wonder if it's my own brain, or if there really is a matrix. Or is everyone just closer-looking to each other than I realise? Like, is there, say 1000 prototype categories that we all sort of fall into. I mean, people always tell me I look like someone they know. So is the familiarity actually real? Maybe to make us feel not so lonely when we go so far away from familiars? A survival thing?It certainly isn't comforting for me, it makes me feel odd. Especially when the glitch lasts this long. This morning it seemed to stop abruptly when I crossed the Faubourg Poissonnière and a man started yelling at me from a truck. I thought he was leering but I couldn't understand what he was saying so I kept walking and checked if I'd dropped something. And then another man two trucks back started yelling out his window at me too. Was my skirt in my knickers? They kept shouting and pointing at me. Other people in the street turned to look at me, but I still couldn't figure it out. All those faces staring at me, none familiar in any way - I could have been on another planet. I scuffled off to work checking my pockets. Nothing was missing. Except the glitch. I was glad, though it was a bit of a brutal way to be jolted back to the cold unfamiliar light of day.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

It's hard not to eat biscuits. I'm ok at it, as long as the biscuits aren't there. But if they're there, and the pack is open, it's very very hard not to eat them. And by eat them, I mean eat them all. I've always been like that. I will go to bed having eaten one ortwo, but I will sleep badly, because I know the rest of the biscuits are still there, waiting, in their sweet little packet, in just the next room. Because I've had that feeling before, and not slept well, I tend to eat the whole packet before getting into bed. Which is also unfortunate because it's hard to sleep well with all that refined sugar in your belly. Basically in all cases biscuits make it hard for me to sleep because if they're in my house, they're in my belly or on my mind, and if they're not in my house I'm wondering about them and when I might perhaps next buy some. Or swearing I shall never buy biscuits again. Tonight I'm in that latter category because I just polished off the last Choco Bisson, though I swore I was going to try harder.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

The only thing worse than feeling like crap, if you're a bunny like me, is feeling like crap and not being able to write about it. Isn't that ridiculous? That the only true solace you can find in your tragedy is the fact that you have something to capitalise on. I remember at school trying so hard to fall off the monkey bars or trip myself over on the asphalt so I'd get a plaster cast. All the cool kids had them - even the uncool ones that broke something were instantly popular. They had stories. They were fascinating. You watched them revel in it in true rags to riches style - faces all red from all the sudden celebrity. I wanted that. I wanted to tell everyone how much it hurt when they put the needle in and how much the cast itched inside. But god damn if my survival instinct wouldn't prevent me from that final stage of the fall every god damned time. I tried and tried. A kingdom for a story. Anything for crutches. Anyway my point is that I've been feeling so dreadful, and experiencing all sorts of complicated and difficult things and the difficulty has been so deep that I haven't even had the energy to find it curious and thus pick up my fingers to type it; all the stories have just limped away. And now I can't even catch them. So it was all just experienced - lived - what a waste! What's the point of going through stuff if you can't at least make a telemovie about it? Existential Bunny stars in '2012: The Ungraspable'. Or the prize-winning novel by Rabbit E Bunny: 'Buried In The Warren'. Or the solo synthesizer album 'Deep Shit' by Synth Bunny; the hit track called 'So Deep You Can't Even Write About It.' Something. Anything. That's the only great thing about cruel, cruel life and all its maddening tricks - you at least get to experience stuff and grow, and get better, and hopefully do something worthwhile with it all. You can't really do much until you've got stuff to tell and that is the shitty thing about being 24. I'm quite far from 24 now, so I'm raring to do some things. Hopefully in 2013 I'll find the balance, and convert. Sitting at home wearing a shit-hot unsigned cast is very very pointless.